In crime-ridden, jazz crazy Kansas City of the 1930s, telegraph operator Blondie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) kidnaps the wife of a prominent political advisor to negotiate the return of her own kidnapped husband, held by gangster “Seldom Seen.” High-pressure negotiations play out against a background of a furiously lived nightlife, loosely drawn from director Robert Altman’s own childhood memories and local Kansas City lore.

A group of top-flight musicians re-create the sounds of Kansas City’s heady jazz scene of the 1930s, including a historic recreation of the “battle of the saxes” between Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young.